Eternity
by Orin Hasting
Summary: Pain, helplessness, vengeance. The tale of the girl named Devan. -Supernatural/Sci-Fi/Angst/Horror/Romance-
1. Prologue

The rain poured down relentlessly upon the urban Manhattan landscape. The weather was unusual for the planet, but the girl in the sopping rags wasn't surprised. The out of the ordinarily bad wasn't anything new for her. The rain ranked fairly low on the unwritten list of depressing events.

Her name was Devan. Long had passed the days where anyone spoke it aloud, however. There was no reason to. No reason to acknowledge such an existence, if one could call it that. If there ever was one speaking directly to the urchin, it was undoubtedly someone yelling over an attempted theft, or a property owner commanding her to leave what shelter she might have found.

The withering illness robbed the girl of the quality of life she might have once had. It had been too long a period of her mournfully short life that the figurative cloud had hung in its place. Too long for her to salvage the memories that once were. What those memories were, she couldn't say, but anything was better than the present. If only she could remember… maybe she could put herself in a better place, if only in mind. Hope had perished along with spirit. All that remained was animal instinct: Survival.

Devan slumped down against a graffiti plastered alley wall. Hunger was burning its way through her body, she hadn't slept in 2 days, the cough was too bad to allow her a rest, and the ancient clothes that did all they could do cover her frail body were ripped and disintegrated beyond repair, leaving her on borderline nakedness. She was tired. Not particularly physically, but all around, and emotionally. Tired of begging for scraps. Tired of the pain that rippled through her chest every time she took another breath. Tired of… everything. Times like this had come before. Times where ending it all seemed the wisest choice. But the young girl's willpower to do something so drastic wasn't enough. She could never take her own life, no matter how much a wonderful panacea it seemed to be. So the torment continued, and the rain came down.

Her head sunk between her knees, lamenting once again over the tragic state of affairs. She brought her bony fingers up through her hair to grasp her head in grief. Small, uncontrollable sobs forced their way up, only resulting in lancing pain through her chest and lungs. Crying was a futile action. It solved nothing, it only caused you to ponder over your plight further, and for poor Devan, it hurt like fire. She sniffed up a dribble of snot, trying to fight back the painful action. The tears stopped, she realized. At least that was something to be happy about. Happy…

The fragile heart jumped as the sound of a roaring engine blasted through the chasm of concrete and steel. What was happening, the thought shot through her weary mind. It was a cargo vehicle, a pretty big one, and it headed right towards the child. By quick, simple deduction there was plenty of room in width of the alleyway, enough to scurry off to the side and avoid the speeding lunatic. Devan pulled herself to her feet with only a slight wobble. Adrenaline flooded through her skull, telling her along with common sense to get out of the way. She braced her body to run, then stopped short. This was the answer she was looking for. Why should I, she asked herself with tears in her ice blue eyes.

She turned towards her unlikely liberator, forcing her eyelids open. She thought back upon her haunting life for a brief moment, but stopped as soon as she began. What was the use? There was no reason to remember the pain that was all she could recall, only the present mattered now. The present that would bring the pain to its final rest. The tears stopped. For the only time she could bring into her silent reverie, she was happy. Genuinely happy. Her life offered her no escape, so death was all that was left. With that final thought, and the roar of the engine drawing ever near, she did something she hadn't in as long as she could remember. She smiled.

The vehicle blared down the dingy side street with apparent assurance. It weaved not once, aside from carefully avoiding the occasional waste receptacle. No, this was no intoxicated fool, this driver had a purpose. What that purpose was never crossed the young girl's mind, but if it had, it would have clearly been wrong. At what seemed to be the last possible moment, the vehicle swerved into a quick slide, stopping just feet short from the thin figure, the sliding doors shuddered open with startling abruptness, and the gloved hands seized their prey with naught more than a whisper.

The event shot past in mere seconds, and Devan's tired psyche could do nothing more than close off to the world. The end was not near; this had happened before, men snatching the poor vagrant off to do as they pleased with her frail, unresisting body. She closed her eyes and let the fleeting abduction go forth. She hadn't the energy, or the will to make a stand to say otherwise.

A tear rolled down her ghostly white cheek, and then the blackness consumed her.


	2. Lab Rat

The little girl's eyelids fluttered weakly as consciousness slowly crept on. She made an effort to twist her head to the side, attempting weakly to take in her surroundings, but failed in her anemic haze. The energy to do so wasn't in the child's grasp, and her head settled back to its original position. She let her eyes close again, even such a pitiful action was an effort. The jumbled thoughts drifted through her mind aimlessly, a desperate attempt to take hold onto some sort of emotional or spiritual foundation for her flailing lack of knowledge and awareness.

The first thing she realized was how cold it was. She wasn't clothed, and the table on which she was laid, or rather, bound to, was made of a slick, and freezing, steel surface. Her befuddled mind fought for lucidity.

After a handful of cloudy moments, it came back. Not all of it, only the bits that really mattered. She was sick, dreadfully sick. She was poor, piteously poor. And most of all, she was alone, all alone.

Her eyes managed to crack open, gazing down to her body below. Patches, tubes, and every sort of horrific medical tentacles and lances littered her bare body from head to toe. As the clarity furthered, she became aware of a thick plastic tube dangling down her throat, beginning at a nostril. Her head rolled to one side in obvious effort, taking sight of multicolored pouches of liquid hued every color of the rainbow, suspended orderly along metal frames housing monitors, buttons, and other devices she couldn't ascertain.

For all the IVs and tubes probing and lancing every orifice and surface, the pain was still there. She took in another withering breath, only intensified by the panic and fear. A quiet cough escaped her burning lungs and her eyes rolled back in pain. A coughing fit was the last thing the girl wanted to start, so she calmed her breathing to shallow gasps, trying to forget the scene around her, and focus on nothing but gaining control of the pathetically difficult task of taking in oxygen.

But ignoring everything around her was impossible. Where was she? How did she get here? Why was she hooked up to all this equipment? The last interrogating thought piqued her interest more than the others. Maybe she was going to get better. Maybe someone found her and decided to bring her to a hospital. Maybe the frightening picture around her was a good thing, something that could fix her. The tired little girl entertained the thought as long as she could, but the doubts were inescapable. Optimism was not something she was good with.

Why was she still in such pain if she was connected to all these devices? Surely there would be some form of pain killing substance along with all of those bags of unknown fluid. She was obviously drugged, she decided, but what was doing that? If something was strong enough to knock her out like it clearly had, wouldn't it numb the pain in some way? Thoughts bounced around her increasingly lucid mind. Unless the incapacitating substance wasn't in one of the hanging bladders around her. No, it couldn't be, the fog clouding her thinking was growing thinner as the minutes clocked by. The knockout drug must have been given to her when-

It all flooded back.

"Ahh, hello little Devan. How are you feeling?" A tall, heavily built male in an immaculately pallid lab coat strolled up beside the table, giving the terrified child a knowing smile.

Devan pulled her chapped lips apart, fighting against her vocal chords to mutter something in reply. "Wh-Where…" The action tickled her burning chest, causing her to reel in pain as another cough surfaced.

The man raised both hands in ease, "Please, do not push yourself. You've had quite an experience, haven't you?"

Experience? What was this man talking about? Her brow creased at the comment as she regained control of the coughing.

"The… abduction. I hate that word, don't you?" He clarified, feigning a remorseful frown.

"Wh-Why did you… they, take me?" The girl's voice resounded sounding little more than a whispered squeak.

"To help you, Devan. You're very ill." He clasped his hands behind his back, walking slowly away from and around the table. "When we heard of your plight, we had to do something. We came and got you as soon as we could, isn't that right?"

Devan closed her eyes in reflection. She was in the alley, the cargo vehicle was raging straight towards her, it swerved at the last moment, the doors flew open, and that's all she could remember. Came and got her? The disturbing man said it himself, she was abducted.

"Why… Why did they abduct me like that?" Her voice returned slightly, and she was able to utter her thoughts without coughing. "Why didn't they just tell me they were here to help?" Seldom seen anger was rising in her voice. "Why did they grab me and knock me out! Why-"

Her voice cut off as a metallic phrase blared out from a speaker overhead, "Dr. Volker, we're ready to begin simulation R-5."

The confident façade cracked slightly as the voice cut off. Simulation R-5?

"What's that? What are you really doing to me!" Devan's weak tone cracked, and another destructive coughing fit erupted.

"Nothing for you to be concerned with, my dear." His words seemed to be an attempt to be calming, but his image now was icy cold. He walked towards an exit, turning back to Devan with fake smile.

The poor girl's head was spinning out of control. She couldn't imagine anything worse happening, yet it was. She couldn't understand what was happening. She tried to understand, and she was met with a wall of stone. People were lying to her, but why? What use did they have with someone like her?

The panicked ideas racing through her mind, her heart beating faster still, her breathing pushed to furious pant, she couldn't take the sudden influx of emotional trauma. Darkness hazed around her vision, and her mind shut down. After a final desperate, grasping moment, unconsciousness returned.


End file.
